Dani’s first headshot was her mugshot taken after getting arrested for tagging in the New York suburban town where she grew up. She’s been trying to reclaim those glory days ever since. Her memoir, The Girlfriend Mom: How I D.I.Y.'d My Family, hits shelves soon. After thirty years, tap-dancing through life as a childfree woman, Dani fell in love with a divorced dad of two and stepped into the amorphous role of a parent’s live-in significant other—or, babysitter without compensation. She was presented with a Whitman’s Sampler of motherhood, which included making clueless rookie mistakes like leaving the nine-year-old alone in the house while running to Walgreen’s for raisins and donating to the Alzheimer’s Association as the kids’ Christmas gifts.
Seven years in, Dani got her bearings, sinking deeper into a longing for the kids, and semi-parenting, surprising herself and those around her. She kept Nicole's teenage secrets and whistled while she laundered Tyler’s athletic supporter and anointed herself, “The Girlfriend Mom.”
And then she was dumped for a natural blond.
It wasn’t a traditional divorce, and Dani had no visitation rights. But she and the kids didn’t break up. Intent on creating a life of her choosing, Dani went from keeping a guardedly warm distance towards the kids to fighting for a place in their lives—DIY’ing a family that now included her ex-boyfriend’s ex-wife.
Dani's writing appears in Medium, HuffPo, Modern Mom, Stepmom Magazine, Babble, and The Hollywood Journal. She’s spoken at lifestyle conferences and interviewed on nationally syndicated radio shows for being the Girlfriend Mom. She boasts placing second in her age bracket in the 2014 US National Pole Championships. Pictures provided upon request